Sometimes, as a writer, I use struggles to write a moment of utopia. I think it's a natural urge to give my messy reality a happy ending. Utopias are never perfect,however, because that would be boring. In fact, the imperfection of utopias makes for good drama (several Star Trek reruns use that principle to good effect.) But at the same time, reading one's written utopia makes for a satisfying sigh and a feeling of being wrapped in a security blanket, if only for a moment.
For example, the short story below. It takes place at the setting for a few of my books, an ecocollective named Barn Swallows' Dance. The main characters are a May-December couple who have been married for about 30 years, Josh Young (age 53) and Jeanne Beaumont-Young (age 83). The Kami mentioned in the story are spirits in Shinto. Enjoy!
******
That day, as she had every day for the six months since her
husband died, Jeanne Beaumont- Young sat in the back yard of her cottage in the
circle of cottages waiting for him.
Her daily help thought she was morbid, maybe even senile, but
they allowed that her relationship with her husband had been something of a
fairy tale. He had been an author -- not a paperback author, but an author that
The New York Times and the like lauded as important. He had credited Jeanne, a
much older botany professor, with much of his inspiration. The age difference
had been considered controversial, but no one could argue that they hadn't
loved each other.
The back yard, like the front, sported a lush collection of
trees, vines, and plants, all edible. She had planted them all years ago when
they had moved there. Others took care of them now.
She sat in the wooden lawn chair for hours a day, a wizened
woman with a fall of thick white hair. Waiting.
Jeanne wished she could see visions. Gaia had not given that
gift to her. Jeanne could talk to kami, or nature spirits, encourage them to
grow big, strong plants. But she could not see them, or even see metaphors of
their presence.
That had been her husband's gift, and she desperately missed
him.
That's why she sat in the yard, in her permaculture guild, a
planting of trees and perennial food plants, day after day. Josh had told her
once that Shinto religion believed that the most exemplary of humans would
reincarnate as kami. Josh had believed in Shinto, and she believed he was
exemplary. She believed he was out there, as a kami, waiting for her.
She could not have told anyone about this, and no one would
have believed her anyhow. But she sat. And waited.
A mist rose up from the depths of the woods. One patch of mist grew
more defined, more opaque, and did not burn off as the sun rose. “I?” the patch
thought to itself as it coalesced, taking form, although no more solid.
It clutched toward sentience. “I … am?” It looked around at
the trees surrounding it. “Purpose?” It knew it had a purpose, and its purpose
had to do with the sun slanting down through the branches, and the cool green,
and the muddy scent of the nearby lake. A fragment of sound, more staccato than
birdsong with odd pauses, crossed its mind: “Sometimes, the most exemplary of
humans …” In the jumble it heard its name, knew what it was: kami. Protector
spirit.
The kami floated toward the lake and slid inside a tree trunk
to see how it felt inside. The tree, which it recognized as willow, felt good,
right. But – It felt a lack of
something, a piece of itself gone. It strained to remember – remember? What was
that? Didn’t it always live there? Remember …
Somewhen, it had been something
else, dying in a place of stones and earth, its life pouring out of it.
Remembered birdsong: “My willow, I’ve called for help, but I’m afraid you won’t
make it.” It – he -- recognized his last words: “I told you you’d outlive me.”
He was a willow? That made no sense: He was inside a willow,
but he was not a willow. Another word: metaphor. Someone, the old woman with
the husky voice, called him a willow. That realization jogged another
memory, a robust woman who stood next to him in white, and a voice like wind
whistling through a log which he surmised was his voice: “you are my brook, and
I would die without you.”
He was looking for a brook? No, he was looking for the woman;
this was metaphor again. He vaguely remembered his past life was based on
metaphor; now he was stripped to his essence and had no need to speak
obliquely, or even to speak. He moved now, like a cloud blown by wind, looking
for the woman.
He didn’t travel far. He felt her presence, bracing and
quicksilver, and floated down to a clay-walled cottage where a frail,
white-haired woman sat at the edge of a circular grove of trees. He knew these
trees – had planted them with this woman in his past life. Jeanne! he realized,
and his sense of detachment crumbled. “It makes no difference what I am now, I
am as much hers as I am Gaia’s.”
First sunset in the grove: He stood in the sunlight in front
of the clearing, showing himself to her. She squinted into the clearing,
wrinkling her brow, but she did not see him. He felt an ache in his center that
he remembered in his previous form – his heart. He tried to call her voice, but
he spoke only wind. He stayed there,
watching a tear run down her cheek. When all was dark, she walked inside the
cottage.
Second sunset in the grove: She wouldn’t recognize his
current form, because it did not look human as she was, as he once had been. He
tried to remember what “human’ looked like – upright, two legs, two arms. He
tried to remember what he looked like as a human – this was much harder. He
remembered being small, mouselike – not mouselike in actuality; that was
another metaphor. Dark hair, almond-shaped eyes…
It took many sunsets for him to remember what he had looked
like. He had to walk in the woman’s dreams as they floated over the forest. The
ephemeral world dismissed the tiny silk fluffs of cottonwood as seed
parachutes, but they carried the dreams of humans to the places where they
would grow. He became as tiny as dust, walking through the rainbows reflected
on each tiny strand of fluff. One night he came across her dreams, smelling of
watercress. He saw himself from a distance, a young man who gazed at the woman
she once was. The woman was soft and formidable in a sweater and jeans, her
dark hair tied back –
“No!” He admonished himself. “Look at yourself. Study every
detail.” Black thick hair touching his collar and falling in his eyes. Large,
almond-shaped, luminous brown eyes – he never would have guessed. A slight
smile, sulky lower lip. Long but not prominent nose. Slight body, like a willow
sapling.
“Josh?” he asked his younger self, his ephemeral self, but
got no answer. This was just a dream, not a life.
He – Josh – floated back to Jeanne’s grove. He stood in the
grove in a patch of sunlight., standing right in front of the now-old Jeanne;
the white-haired woman seemed agitated in her chair but did not see him. Josh
felt rain on his cheek that matched her tears. Then, a flash of memory, tinged
with a feeling that tasted like flower nectar, which he now knew as love–
Jeanne could actually hear kami!
He knew what to do, now that he remembered speech.
Hours passed. The light hit the guild in a certain way,
spotlighting a patch of grass in the ring of trees and shrubs. She heard a
voice, light and dry, a hallucination, her Josh: "I remember you don't see
things, but you do hear. Step into the light." So she did. Within the
circle, Josh stood as she first knew him -- a black-haired, ethereal, mercurial
young man rather than the calm, greying, near-sighted older man she remembered
from their later years.
He kissed her, as he always had, like he was slaking his
thirst. “You are my brook, and I couldn’t live long without you.”
“You are my tree, my willow, and I would have grown dry
without you.” These words were their secret, their wedding vows. Nobody else
had ever heard them.
“You know there are birds to feed. Come along.”
"What do I look like now?" she whispered
"A goddess of summer, as you always have to me."
They stepped into the apple tree, as they had no bodies to
burden them anymore.
I like the passage. It demonstrates that love has no boundaries. My maternal grandma ...at the end of her life had a mental break and was not always in touch with reality. She believed that her husband - my granddad was still with her. He died in 1970. She would sign birthday cards with both of their names, when you went to see her she would talk about him as if he was only in the next room. She would tell you what he he thought about the subject in addition to her own opinion. It was a little unusual to say in the least but perhaps her mind had brought him back to her because she still loved him and wanted him there with her. This is Lanetta.
ReplyDelete